Tuesday, January 12, 2010

WarpCon 1500 list

After various rounds of playtesting over the past few weeks, I've settled on the following list that will hopefully bring me some luck in the upcoming WarpCon Tournament. I've been using various lists, mostly centered around a smaller version of my larger 'Brightlance' list, but with some sage advise from none other than Aldarionn of Warseer fame, my love of Fire Dragons has been rekindled at last, and after almost a year of sitting on the shelf near my horde of gerbils, they're back in the fray!

One of the most difficult changes I've had to make for this list is dropping my 2 Wraithlords. But change is what 40k is all about - change and adapt, or be left behind. So after a lot of thinking, (and forum hogging!) I built some more Serpents, a Fire Prism, wrote them into my list and pushed the Wraithlords out of their Heavy Support slot.

A glaring issue I hadn't noticed until Aldarionn pointed it out to me, was that the Wraithlords didn't really fit into my mechanised force. They're slow, they can't possibly keep up with the rest of my warhost, so they're left behind. So what now? Adapt! And that's exactly what I've done.

The name of the game here is to use speed to get where I need to go, collect those 4+ cover saves when I need them, and to use mass firepower to whittle down my foes, before I make the charge. I'll have to be careful about disembarking - this list is great for denying killpoints, and manouvering over the battlefield to claim/contest, but if I'm not careful, it's all over if my passengers spill out of their transports and end up dead.

Then of course, there's those last-minute objective-grabbing jetbikes. My plan is to essentially keep them out of harm's way for the majority of the game, and to turboboost towards those objectives at turn 4-5...

By keeping everything in reserve and opting to go second where I can, this will deny my opponent a whole turn of dealing out the pain to my rather small Eldar warhost. The applications to this tactic are astounding - 2 out of 3 missions being objective based means that if I play my cards right, I'll have a whole turn at the end of the game to contest or claim objectives at will. This is a little trick I learned from Fritz at Wayofsaimhann which has really worked wonders in denying those killpoints for my opponent.

Up until today, I'd never been a fan of the Fire Prism option for Heavy Support, but my last few test games have completely changed my mindset. Their massive range means that for the most part, I don't really have to move anywhere - except of course when I need to tankshock those pesky marines away from an Objective on turn 5...

If you learn to use your Skimmers the right way, you'll be nigh indestructible - I've used this list vs 9 Obliterators and deepstriking Terminators, and come out relatively unscathed, and ready to rock (though that was after a crushing defeat at the hands of Mal's Chaos Warhost!). All that aside, my pet love of this list is driving up my Storm Guardians, disembarking and flaming everything in sight, while the Warlock blasts away with his Destructor. Flame on!

7 comments:

I think you'll be underwhelmed with the Autarch and Exarch. Yeah, it's 10 PW attacks... at S3. Consider that a good squad of Banshees kicks out three times as many, yet how many Marines do they typically kill? Additionally, this is on a SoF DA squad in a BL Serpent... I'd use that speed and mobility to avoid CC.

Call me biased, but if you're going to consider taking an Autarch and getting him into CC, I think it is well worth it to just get Yriel.

Also, are the jetbikes grabbing a cover save from the Prisms or the other way around? I can see the first, but I'd question the second.

Overall, it's a solid list and favors strong tactics. It's just different from what I would run. The closest analogy I can pin is that it favors "jab and fade" with a strong close. I tend to prefer the "left hook from out of nowhere" style. I prefer to table opponents rather than resort to objective grabs.

Haha, thanks for the compliment :P. I reference your blog a lot in my comments, and I have you to thank for a lot of my strategies.

As for the list, the reason I suggested the build that I did for the Dire Avengers was because the list lacked CC capability, and opponents often have sneaky ways of locking your troops in combat if you lack some form of counter assault to bail them out. At 1,500 points it can be rough to get Fire Dragons AND a dedicated assault unit into the list, so sticking an Autarch in a Defender DA unit with a PW/SS is a reasonable substitute in case an opponent catches you off guard.

Plus having the Autarch around lets you use the reserves denial strategy with more success against podding Marines, Chaos Daemons and the like.

Its not a 100% ideal build against every foe out there, but it IS reasonably effective against many of them. I'm glad its been working out for you!

"Haha, thanks for the compliment :P."Truly meant. I haven't had much time for hanging around the Army Lists forum of late, but I haven't felt bad about that as you and a couple others are providing such quality replies.

"the list lacked CC capability"Yeah, I saw where you were going with that but I don't know if it will be enough. It's rough to get firepower AND CC at 1500 in a mech-Eldar list. The current version is kinda iffy CC ability and won't phase most commanders. I'd rather have something scarier in CC or just plan to avoid CC and cut my losses when it occurs.

What I was obliquely suggesting was something like:Drop the Exarch to a stock SoF dual-ASC w Bladestorm. This saves you 25 points.Drop three Spirit Stones or that Embolden Jetlock.Use the points to up the Autarch to Yriel. That'd create a real CC threat without the cost of buying another tank and you still have the Reserves bonus.

I tested that list out myself un-altered and came out with a win against the new Nids codex. The lack of CC didnt seem like that much of a problem, but I DID play a second game using a mixed list, and the Striking Scorpions I took killed 87 Gaunts and a pair of the new gaunt spawning MC's (can't recall what they are called). They finally fell to a Trigon Prime, but my Farseer put it down in the next round of combat.

I've come to determine that with Fortune, Striking Scorpions are some of the best anti-horde available to the Eldar.